cordova-plugin-ionic now includes a cordova hook on the before_build event. If you're running Ionic CLI >= 4.x the hook will generate a manifest of the bundled app files in your binary. The plugin uses the manifest to populate the file cache before retrieving the first update. Previous versions downloaded every file on the first update. This means that your very first update should be much faster than it was before.

NOTE: that since this is a before_build hook it probably will not run before launching in the emulator. You can generate the manifest file yourself when testing by running ionic deploy manifest in the root of you app before running on the emulator.

Keep in mind that updating plugins will require a new native build to ensure that future live deploys are binary compatible. You'll also need to manage the native versioning of your Deploy builds to ensure that non-compatible changes aren't delivered to new or old native builds.

If you'd like to manage the versions of the deploy and webview plugins manually take a look at our doc on dependency management for details on setting an explicit version.